


Loss In Black and White

by justahufflepuff



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Pack Feels, sad Isaac Lahey is sad, someone kicked my puppy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-20
Updated: 2013-09-20
Packaged: 2017-12-27 02:56:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/973485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justahufflepuff/pseuds/justahufflepuff
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Isaac's life is full of spaces. The two that hurt the most hover just behind his shoulders where a boy and girl once stood. His pack, little and broken, but still very much his. His life goes on without them, but no one's around to pick up his pieces.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Loss In Black and White

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this as a series of text messages to my friend, and it turned into this behemoth thing with feelings and emotions at one in the morning.

Isaac's life is full of spaces.  
  
Deep spaces, the kind that one cannot quantify in a simple sentence. They do not spread over miles or legions and they are not bottled inside of him. Instead they cover oceans, delve down to the bottom where light becomes myth and make a home there. Spaces that linger in the corner of his eye and sentences no one says any more, words and names they simply do not speak. But these spaces had names, have names, and their own places that once meant home. These spaces that would crowd next to him in public one on each shoulder and constant never failing always there bond.  
  
Two spaces, two oceans, two painfully present taboos.  
  
He wants to scream about them, shake sense into the world that doesn't seem to fathom their depth and bone deep importance.  
  
He doesn't.  
  
Pack runs thicker than family, Derek had once told him. It's how they function so well as a team. Family ties could be broken too easily. Someone once told Isaac that family ran bone deep. He wasn't sure about that, but Derek was right.  
  
Isaac could feel pack in his skin, his bones, his blood, all the way down to the cell make up and the space between the organelles and nuclei. It is an atom deep connection and it pulsed and hummed and growled and wildwildwild all the way down etched in his being an overwhelming sense of home.  
  
Homes could be broken. Family wasn't permanent. Time had taught him that. A heart condition had taken his mother a car bomb his brother. The father that cuddled him one day would whip him the next. His aunt went senile with loss. Erica and Boyd had died by claws stuck in so deep that no arcane will to live could fix it.  
  
Family wasn't permanent. Pack ran deeper. Two spaces behind around ever present, just out of the corner of his eye, just beyond his hunched shoulders.  
  
The school planted trees in their honor. New life to remember old life, they said. Keep them in everyone's thoughts.  
  
As if. No one knew them. For a few short weeks they had been glorious. Shone like the sun and burned as hot. They were stars they were Heracles' 12 labors they were Icarus all in one. Two trees did not do them justice.  
  
One night Isaac snuck onto school property with a knife. Carved a name deep into each tree. Carved it deeper and deeper still. The knife welds blistered into his hands and he barely cared. It's hard to forget what you are forced to notice.  
  
Erica Reyes. Vernon Boyd. Erica Reyes. Vernon Boyd. Erica Boyd. Vernon Reyes. EricaEricaEricaBoydBoydBoyd. He shouted them into the dark as he carved and their names blurred together and for a moment they were whole and one and pack again.  
  
No one heard him. He's used to it.

Scott understands so much of the ins and outs of Isaac. The walls he has built to keep himself out of the small spaces he fears, the words he throws around to keep people close but never close enough. Scott is wholesome and good in all the ways that Isaac has ever understood, in all the ways of a sixteen year old who has grown light years in a few months. He looks at Isaac and sees something that shines. The fact settles somewhere behind Isaac's lungs and warms him inside out.  
  
Scott understands his ins and outs but he doesn't understand this. Isaac does not expect him to. After all, Scott does not have a pack the way Isaac does. It runs in Scott's blood but not in his atoms. If he wanted to he could walk away and chose a new pack: the alpha that made himself beta.  
  
Isaac doesn't have that choice. He doesn't want that choice. His spaces have become a part of him.  
  
Sometimes he tries to bring them up in conversation. He starts a sentence and their names rise up on his tongue and then wither there, decayed but not forgotten. Maybe he if tries enough times they'll make it past his lips and for once he will talk about things. Actual properly speak about something as if it mattered.  
  
It mattered. It still does. Past, present, future.  
  
The names didn’t pass Derek's lips either. Every now and then he caught a look of something fathomless and so lonely it's almost terrifying. Derek felt just as fiercely as Isaac and their loss echoed off reach other, bouncing around the loft and making it unbearable. He does not blame Derek for leaving, doesn’t blame Cora either.  
  
He just wishes that someone would just talk about them. Would verbally confirm that they existed, that they had laughed and cried and fought just like everyone else.  
  
When that person turns out to be Jackson, Isaac is stunned.  
  
It happens after a lacrosse game. They had won, now they always won. The lack of supernatural occurrences had heightened the more... Gifted members of the team’s motivation and resulted in a dramatic increase in practices they actually attended.  
  
Victory courses through the locker room. Boys clasp each other on the back and laughed, towels whipped through the air. He ought to feel elated. Scott's face is a fresco painted in jubilance and pride yet Isaac can feel his shoulders hunching in to make his body small and insignificant.  
  
They should've been here with him. Erica would have the entire room tripping over her, but she only ever saw three people. Him. Stiles. Boyd. Her boys. She had always been his partner in crime.  
  
"Lahey!" Someone calls his name. "Isaac?" A hand clasps his shoulder when he doesn’t respond.  
  
Isaac tenses, wire tight.  
  
"Whoa there." The hand moves and Isaac looks back to see Danny's kind face.  
  
He relaxes and forces the spaces from his mind. "Hey, Danny."  
  
Danny's smile reeks of serenity. Isaac can practically smell it. "We're having a party at Greenberg's."  
  
Isaac must've twitched because Danny laughs.  
  
"Yeah that's what I said. I was just going to go home, but Scott's going to Greenberg's and you look like you could use some company. Come over to mine."  
  
Thrown Isaac stares at him for a moment. No one invites Isaac anywhere. Even Scott sometimes left him out, to keep him safe.  
  
"Yeah." Isaac's answering smile is half formed and on it's way to fully fledged. "Yeah, sure. Sounds great. I'll tell Scott, so he knows not to look for me."  
  
He can feel the questioning weight of Danny's gaze as he weaves his way towards Scott and he ignores it.  
  
For the first time in awhile he doesn't move as if he's waiting for two people to follow him.  
  
They enter Danny's house and two identical heads of hair hurl themselves Danny as he laughs and scoops them up with ease, one for each hip. They can't have passed three and they look at Danny as if he had just saved the world not won a lacrosse game.  
  
Isaac remembers when he looked at Camden like that, all the times Camden would walk around with him clinging on to his older brothers back. Something pangs in a place that had just recently healed. He misses his pack, but he misses Camden too. The dog tags tucked carefully under his shirt press cold comfort into his skin.  
  
"Isaac, meet Bridgette," he bumps his left hip and earns a giggle. "And Elena." he bumps his right and earns another. "They're right little terrors who stayed up well past their bedtime."  
  
"Wanted to see you!" Elena protested. "Is Isaac goalie too?"  
  
Danny and Isaac both shake their heads but Danny speaks. "No, Lainey, Isaac is offense. Though if you ask me, he always seems to be on the defensive."  
  
The joke soars over the twins heads but Isaac wonders with a jolt how much Danny has noticed that they'd never given him credit for.  
  
"Bed time." He informs his siblings as they wail and kiss his cheeks.  
  
Isaac had never pictured Danny as an older brother. Now he cannot imagine how he'd missed it. By the time they are up in Danny's room (Door open! yells his mother) Isaac is sitting on the corner of Danny's bed playing at invisible as Danny boots up his computer.  
  
"Your sisters are cute." He mutters at the bedspread.  
  
"Thanks." Danny smiles at him.  
  
Isaac ducks his head and picks at the threads of Danny's bedspread. Everything in this house feels comforting and warm. A family that cares about each other practically gives off their own distinct scent. He had noticed it when he'd moved in with Scott. Happiness clung to the corners of things like a virus. He hadn't known a house like that since two solemn men had showed up on his doorstep and handed his father a carefully folded flag with dog tags on top.  
  
He barely notices as Danny booted up Skype and came to sit on the bed as well. There’s a healthy distance between them but when he looks up he could see a sleep deprived Jackson staring back.  
  
Right. Danny and Jackson were best friends. Are best friends, he corrects as Jackson immediately starts in the teasing. Ethan had staid after all, had stuck around for Danny and there are pictures of the pair of them all over the room. The sort of pictures Scott had with Allison.  
  
Isaac sits and listens and tries desperately not to feel like a third limb.  
  
"Mop head!" Jackson snaps and Isaac looks up. "I asked how the pack is, idiot."  
  
Isaac slides his eyes over to Danny who raises an eyebrow as if to say 'what did you expect?'  
  
He knew what to expect. Jackson was Pack, even if his parents had shipped him off to London at the drop of a hat. He had come around and grown on each of them in his own, abrasive way. Isaac liked him. He was exactly the brand of asshole that Isaac needed in his life. Straight to the point egotism he could deal with. It was almost comforting. He knew all the correct responses.  
  
"Well?" Jackson would never let on he actually cared. "Did you find Runaways One and Two?"  
  
The room felt too small. Danny made an abortive motion with his hands that Jackson ignored.  
  
"Yeah." Isaac says through a thick throat. "They're dead, now."  
  
"Shit." Jackson breathes.  
  
"Yeah." Isaac stares at the ceiling and tries to ignore the spaces pressing down. He could hear Erica laughing.  
  
In the distance he can hear Danny promising to call Jackson back as Jackson swears 'he didn't know Danny, Christ.'  
  
Next Isaac knows Danny has slid himself into his personal space.  
  
"Isaac?" He asks. "Are you alright?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Do you want to talk about it?" Danny's not touching him but the proximity provides a comfort that Isaac has missed for awhile. Like there is someone in the world besides Scott that wants him to stay safe.  
  
Normally this is the time where Isaac shuts down and just says no. Blocks it out and soldier on. But he can’t any more. Any more and he'd drown.  
  
"They were just kids, they were just kids and now it's like they never existed."  
  
Danny says nothing but kept a calm level gaze on Isaac.  
  
Isaac works his jaw and doesn’t look at Danny. All of the words he had never said bubbled at the tip of his tongue, just behind his lips and suddenly he could barely remember how to speak. He feels like crying, something he hadn't let himself do since the second time his father has locked him in that freezer. Crying had only ever made it worse.  
  
"I only had two friends." Isaac isn't sure if any one can actually hear him. But he wouldn't cry in front of Danny. "And now no one even talks about them."  
  
"Tell me about them. I never knew Erica and Boyd."  
  
Somehow hearing their names made it easier. His airway opens up and he breathes and their names finally escape from his lips. He tells Danny stories about his small, broken pack for hours until his voice is hoarse and his eyes are wet and there is no way to speak any more.  
  
"They sound brave." Danny ventures.  
  
"They were stupid, to run." Hesitation, just a beat, two beats and then... "I am almost ran too. They asked me to come with them. I almost did. Derek didn't know what to do but Boyd seemed so sure and Erica had always been so strong."  
  
He has never told anyone else this. Scott knew because something in Scott seemed to implicitly know the shameful parts of Isaac, the parts he hid away. If Derek knew he hadn't mentioned it.  
  
"Scott needed me, so I stayed. But I wasn't going to. Not for ages. Not until the lacrosse game started.  
  
“If I had gone with them, do you think they would've lived? Do you think we would've gotten Erica out alive?"  
  
Danny stays silent, and it seems to Isaac like he’s weighing the words on his tongue. "No," he says at last. "No I think you would've died, too."  
  
He's sent home with a bag overflowing with cookies and food from Danny's mother and a gentle admonishment from his friend to talk with Scott and the others. Danny swore that they probably needed to get the words out just as badly as Isaac did.  
  
Isaac wasn't quite sure if that part was true. After all the others had barely known them. Allison had in fact tried to kill them on multiple occasions. He had tried to kill Lydia. Why would anyone want to open up and share with someone so very obviously broken?  
  
No one came to meet Isaac at the door and no one greeted him as he entered his room. Scott must have staid at Greenberg's and his mother must have a late shift. Isaac didn't like himself enough to be left alone with his thoughts. He didn't trust where that might lead.  
  
The room’s small bordering on just small enough to make him nervous. It’s an old office space, Scott had told him. Something his dad had once used. Isaac could tell that Scott felt the same way about his father that Isaac felt about his. Tiny little signs around the room said that Mr. McCall spent more time in here than he had with his family. Scott didn't like to talk about it and Isaac didn't blame him. Parents were hardly ever perfect.  
  
Scott had offered to switch rooms, because that's just the sort of genuinely and all encompassing good person Isaac has always known. Isaac had refused and continued to refuse every time he offered.  
  
He sits on his bed and blocks out his thoughts. Two spaces sit on either side and he can almost feel Erica resting her beautiful blonde head on his shoulder, sweet in the way she only ever let the Pack see. He can imagine Boyd's solid warm strength right next to him. Neither of them would say anything, not when Isaac clearly needed silence. They'd say nothing and he suddenly finds breathing easier.  
  
He misses them so much that it ached. Tears prick his eyes and memories crowd his brain, demanding all of his attention. Alone in his room Isaac gives in. He cries in the way one does when they want no one to see them, yet desperately need affection. Curling up in the center of his bed he can grasp his hair and imagine Erica making concerned noises in the back of her throat as she rubs his back and Boyd pulling them both into his lap, kissing them both because they needed it, holding them together so they wouldn't, so he wouldn't, shake apart. It doesn’t come anything close to actually having them there, but for a moment he can almost feel their touch and hear their voices.  
  
He falls asleep on the top of sheets, eyes wet and exhausted.  
  
He doesn't remember how it happened but he wakes up tucked into bed.  
  
Shrugging on new clothes he heads downstairs to find Scott already in the kitchen, humming slightly off key to Mumford and Sons as he flips what look suspiciously like Mickey Mouse pancakes. The other boy smiles as he catches sight of Isaac and just for a moment Isaac almost forgets to breathe.  
  
Scott's presence has always managed to calm him down.  
  
"Morning!" Scott greets in between the chorus and the bridge.  
  
"Are you making pancakes?" Isaac asks, a weird catch to his voice. There’s no way for Scott to know that before she died, his mother had always made Isaac Mickey Mouse pancakes after a rough night. Camden had done it too before he'd deployed. Scott can’t have known. After all Isaac has never told any one.  
  
"Mickey Mouse." Scott confirms. "Told you I could actually cook."  
  
Isaac blinks, not sure how exactly how to respond. "I don't know if pancakes count as cooking."  
  
"Fine, I'll just eat yours."  
  
Isaac grabs the plate before Scott does just to hear the other boy laugh. He gets what he wants and knows that he can't talk to Scott now. Not like Danny wanted. Not here in their kitchen while Scott makes Isaac feel like he's home.  
  
"How was Danny's?" Scott asks. Isaac doesn't know what exactly he hears in his voice. He's still too new at this all. And he doesn't have a Stiles like Scott does.  
  
"Good." Isaac fidgets. "Talked to Jackson."  
  
All Scott has to do is raise an eyebrow and words start tumbling out of Isaac's mouth like he's got some sort of verbal diarrhea.  
  
"Danny keeps him up to date on us, on the Pack," he clarifies. "But he must not've, I guess he didn't, it's not like it's Danny's duty to know everything in this town. Jackson asked about Boyd and Erica."  
  
"Oh." Scott doesn't look like he knows how to process what's just happened. His pancake starts smoking and when he flips it, it's burnt.  
  
"Don't you miss them?" Isaac asks, small and in a thousand different pieces.  
  
Scott's mouth hangs open and Isaac can see all the cogs in his brain whirring frantically to find just the right thing to say. Anything to say to make poor, broken, hand me down Isaac Lahey back together again.  
  
He aches; he aches with a deep bottomless emptiness that weighs him down inside out. It's so heavy he can barely move and it presses in from all sides and draws itself from the pity on Scott's face.  
  
Isaac doesn't want to be fixed. These spaces keep him whole.  
  
Scott doesn't say anything and Isaac flees.  
  
He barely realizes where he is until the bell jingles and he's face to face with Scott's boss.  
  
Deaton blinks and Isaac blinks back. He's not sure why his autopilot directed him here but the last few times he's gone here Isaac always left feeling much more assured about the world and his place within it. He breaks eye contact and scuffs the floor.  
  
Silence stretches between them and Isaac barely knows what to do with himself until it breaks.  
  
"Isaac," Deaton's voice gave no sense of surprise. "Nice to see you here again. Scott talks about you often."  
  
Thrown, Isaac looks up. "He does?"  
  
Deaton smiles. "Something tells me you're not here about Scott. He called just before you came, asked me to keep an eye out for a werewolf in distress."  
  
Isaac gives a half aborted shrug; not exactly sure what sort of emotions his face throws out. It didn't matter if Scott had called, he didn't miss them like Isaac did, Isaac could just tell. What's the point of opening up to someone who would only give you pity?  
  
Nothing about Isaac felt broken. He didn't need reassembling. This right here, this was as whole as he was likely to get it. If Scott couldn't see that then didn't know Isaac half as well as he thought.  
  
Deaton gives him a long, considering look. "You know, everyone deals with grief in their own way." He says and Isaac doesn’t bother asking him how he knew that. Scott had called. "It's not shameful to miss them. In fact, I'd be far more concerned if you didn't."  
  
When Isaac doesn’t respond Deaton just continues to smile.  
  
"Tell you what, it's Scott's day off but I still could use some help around the clinic. How about you lend a hand around here?"  
  
It made perfect sense now, why Scott admired the vet so much. He never pushed, even when most people would. The encyclopedia of all things arcane and otherworldly still knew how to let people keep their secret.  
  
Isaac nods, relieved, and Deaton throws him a pair of rubber gloves.  
  
"Wash up and put these on. I'll go give the others a call to let them know you're okay."  
  
Allison grabs his elbow in the hallway next week and practically drags him to the lunch table. He's taken to eating under the trees that belonged to Erica and Boyd, rain or shine.  
  
"You're eating with us today. Inside where you won't get wet."  
  
Isaac doesn’t say anything, just keeps turning his head to catch sight of the trees until they got to the table. He automatically places himself where he could see them and Stiles doesn’t even complain as Isaac took his seat, just moved over and continued arguing fiercely with Lydia about some sort of ultra banshee information he'd found on the Internet.  
  
He doesn’t relax until Scott's warm presence slides in on his other side while Danny kicks at his shin and grins.  
  
"Not out catching hypothermia today, I see." Danny says as Scott throws a grape at Stiles for something he said.  
  
"I don't think I can get hypothermia." Isaac mutters, raising one shoulder and glancing at the trees.  
  
"Not in here you can't."  
  
"Not ever, werewolves don't get sick."  
  
"How's that even work?" Danny asks leaning forward.  
  
Scott shrugs and Allison answers. "It just does. That's why Erica took the Bite in the first place."  
  
If Scott thought that Isaac doesn’t notice the way he scooted closer once Allison said Erica's name then Isaac isn't going to tell him. But he does. The heat of Scott's body sends a shiver down his spine. Danny looks at him like he knows everything about him.  
  
"Erica took the Bite so people would look at her without laughing." Isaac doesn't even know he's said it until the table stilled for a moment.  
  
But it didn't hurt to say her name. It didn't feel like something inside him had hollowed itself out. He could talk about her, about both of them, like this. Sitting at a table surrounded by the survivors.  
  
"Well," Lydia breaks the hush. "All she needed for that was some hair curlers and good tube of lipstick."  
  
Allison laughs and the tension broke. "Not everything can be solved with a makeover, Lyds."  
  
Lydia scoffs but Isaac agrees with Allison. It would've taken more than a day with Lydia Martin to get Erica smiling like she used to with the Pack.  
  
"Well you saw her right?" Lydia reasons. "Total bombshell. Blonde with legs for miles."  
  
Somehow this description of Erica doesn't match with the girl that Isaac had known. That wasn't the Erica who had dragged him and Boyd to the premier of the latest Marvel movie, who had curled up into Isaac's side and told him that Black Widow made her feel powerful again, who put on tight clothes and low shirts for the rush of feeling noticed. It didn't sum up the spitfire girl he'd loved, who cut a man to pieces with her claws and snarked at their Alpha like she had some sort of death wish.  
  
That was the Erica who used her body as a bargaining chip, and knew what a girl could get out of a man if she tried. That was the Erica who kissed Derek as a distraction while Boyd watched.  
  
When Isaac laughs he really means it. "She'dve loved to hear you say that."  
  
High praise from the Queen that never noticed her. They'dve never heard the end of it.  
  
"Of course she would have. It's praise from me." Lydia sniffs and Allison rolls her eyes and snatches food from her best friends plate.  
  
"What are you doing this weekend Isaac?" Allison asks. "I'm having a get together at my place, you should come."  
  
Isaac can’t tell if they wanted him there out of pity, as a measure to keep him from breaking down and running away again, or because they really wanted him there.  
  
"Yeah come on, bro." Stiles says and Isaac has always thought that Stiles didn't like him very much. "It'll be fun. We're gonna make Scott drink."  
  
Scott grins at him and Isaac grins back. With this many people around him he could hardly feel the spaces. He almost feels normal, like Erica and Boyd just stepped out of the room.  
  
"Yeah." Isaac hears himself say. "Yeah, I'll go."

The thing is that Isaac remembers what death looks like. He went to their homes with their bodies, he watched their parents cry. The others, how could the others understand that?  
  
He remembers the look on Erica's face whenever she talked about her mother. How much the woman had given up for Erica, how hard she worked and how deeply she loved her. Isaac saw the way Mrs. Reyes looked at her newly and inexplicably healed child with adoration and relief. Martha Reyes had had him and Boyd over for dinner and shared baby pictures and stories of a little girl with too much hair and thanked them for coming, thanked them for Erica, kissed them both on the cheeks.  
  
Mostly he remembers the way her entire body crumpled at the sight of her daughter’s emaciated body and lifeless eyes. Isaac can remember the way she had yelled, had backed up into her collection of antique teacups and not cared as they broke. Her precious thing was already broken in Derek's arms.  
  
He had held Boyd as he cried at night, trying to fit as much of him in his arms as he could. Before Boyd had always seemed infallible. That night he has seemed so small. Derek had locked himself in his room, and Isaac had clung to Boyd like a buoy kissing his face and his neck and saying nothing. Saying nothing because what Boyd needed was Erica and nothing Isaac said, no apologies, no promises, could get Erica out of that vault and back into their arms.  
  
Isaac remembers walking to the Boyd house. The Boyd's who had just gotten their son back, who had already lost one child.  
  
Cleo had opened the door. At least this time Derek hadn't brought the body.  
  
Isaac didn't know what had been worse: Mrs. Boyd's heartbroken screaming, or the way Mr. Boyd's face had dissolved into a mask of misery.  Cleo hadn't understood. She kept signing to her mother, asking when Vernon would be home he'd promised her bedtime story. Rhia acted as if she was deaf and not mute, as if not hearing the words at all would devalue them completely. Isaac didn't know what else Derek told them. He fled as soon as he'd seen Cleo begin to tear up.  
  
No one was there to gather him in their arms that night. All he had then were two spaces.  
  
He knows that if Erica and Boyd could see him now they'd be furious, livid for the way he'd retreated in on himself, for making his life a series of freezers and careful steps again. This isn't how they would want him to remember them. This doesn't do either of them any semblance of justice. All the three of them had wanted, at the root of it, were friends and somewhere made up of safe spaces. Isaac had that now and he was wasting it.  
  
He just doesn’t understand. Couldn't understand why the kids who had something, who had families now holding close casket funerals and moving out of town, why they had to end up casualties when Isaac had practically begged for it. No one would miss Isaac if he'd died in their stead. Scott might argue to the contrary, but no one would miss Isaac because in the end Isaac couldn't do much.  
  
He couldn't find the vault in time, couldn't pull Boyd out of the water in time, couldn't prove useful enough to have Derek keep him around the loft. He’s just a kid. A kid that had some how escaped the system and didn't have any roots any more. He can’t even vote yet.  
  
And he misses his friends. Misses them so terribly much that sometimes it felt like there would never be a band-aid big enough to cover the extent of the wound.  
  
He misses them.  
  
If anyone understands, it's Allison. Lovely, arrow sharp Allison who has lost more family than anyone, excluding Derek. Allison: who has lost an aunt and a mother within the year, has watched a grandfather descend into madness, who has done terrible things in the name of grief. If anyone knows what it feels like to have limbs torn from you yet still remain whole, it's her.  
  
So when Isaac calls her two days before her party, his voice uncertain as he greets her, she asks only one question.  
  
"Did you go to their funeral, Isaac?"  
  
Isaac pauses and Allison waits through the static. "I err, no. I wasn't... They wouldn't have wanted me there."  
  
"Don't seem so sure of that." Allison's voice is gentle in ways he didn't normally associate with the girl whose family business specializes in murder.  
  
Isaac scoffs.  
  
"Put on the best clothes you have and meet me in your driveway."  
  
"Scott-"  
  
"Will understand. I'll be there in 20 minutes."  
  
Scott does understand. When Isaac asks to borrow a tie a glimmer of something passes in the backlight of his eyes. He slings one around Isaac's neck and ties it himself. Isaac's heart beats out of time and for once it does not have to do with Scott's fingers skimming the surface of his neck and smoothing down the fabric of his shirt.  
  
Isaac's suit is shabby and doesn't quite fit in the shoulders. Once it had belonged to Camden. His name is still inked into the lapel. But he feels safe inside the worn down sleeves and fraying edges.  
  
He doesn't know how Scott knows where he's going when Isaac is still putting the pieces together, but Scott takes a pair of scissors and cuts two makeshift bouquets from his mother’s gardens. Mrs. McCall will have both their hides for this later, but Scott shrugs and says he'll take the fall this time around.  
  
Allison pulls up outside the house. She smiles at Scott and Scott smiles back. Something passes between them and Isaac slides into the car, a ghost of Scott's touch on his chest and his shoulders slumped low.  
  
He doesn't question Allison as they drive. He barely talks. There are two bouquets of flowers in the space between them. Store bought, they run laps around the small garden mismatches he has clutched in his sweaty hands. He doesn't ask where they're going because the dots have finally started to connect.  
  
The car turns down a beaten road and Isaac recognizes those signs. His father drove him past those signs every day for a year. This leads the cemetery where he once dug graves. Part of him is grateful he quit, that he never had to look down on a 7'2" by 32" hole and know which one belonged to Erica and which to Boyd. He has seen their family plots, the small child sized hole with an empty coffin for Alicia, the weather worn hole for Mr. Reyes.  
  
He has been here so many times, but only twice armed with a suit and flowers. The nerves catch in his throat and Allison lays a hand on his shoulder and squeezes. There's no malice behind the act and for once Isaac doesn't feel the least bit wary around her.  
  
She brought him here she bought him flowers. Allison understands.  
  
They reach Erica's first and Isaac freezes. He has never visited a grave to do anything other than morn. The protocols are foreign to him. Even here the two spaces threaten to engulf him.  
  
"When I visit Mom," Allison says from behind his shoulder, "I always talk about my life, about the things she loved to hear about."  
  
Isaac barely knows what Erica would want to hear about, what would make her throw her beautiful head back and laugh. So he just starts talking. He tells her all about the events with Jennifer and the alpha pack, fills her in on the pack dynamics, waxes poetic about Scott as long as he can manage with Scott's ex girlfriend hovering nearby. Erica would like it, he decides. She'd find the way he gets tongue tied and fumbly around a shirtless Scott hilarious. She'd encourage all sorts of bad behaviors.  
  
He misses her so much. And he says that, tracing the indents of her name and wondering if she'll ever come back. Peter had come back, and Erica, well, Erica deserves it so much more.  
  
They spend a good hour at Erica's graveside. Isaac has talked so much his voice is raspy. He's told Erica everything about the pack that he could think of, everything she could possibly want to hear.  
  
Allison touches his shoulder and asks if he wants to move on.  
  
It's time to see Boyd.  
  
Boyd's grave is still fresh. The dirt hasn't quite started turning into grass and whoever took over Isaac's job has packed the ground down tight and professional. If Erica's grave was hard, Boyd's was brutal. The alpha pack and the darach had brought them closer. Boyd had replaced Camden in the part of his heart that longed for family. Seeing his humble, already worn gravestone next to the small empty plot that had Alicia's memory seeped into it cut deep. It closes up his throat and for a moment he thinks of the time that Erica explained what it felt like to seize, the pure terror and embarrassment of it all, the complete and utter lack of control.  
  
He's crying before he realizes it. Big ugly tears that tear out of his throat and wrench from somewhere deep in his gut. They take him by surprise and suddenly there are arms around him, anchoring him down to earth, crowding the empty spaces and filling them with warmth.  
  
Allison is exactly what he needs and she doesn't say a word as he cries. It's the second time he has allowed himself to crumble over them, his small and broken family. Erica had dragged all of them to her house one night and forced the whole pack onto her couch as she plopped in some Disney movie he had never heard of. But by the end, as the little blue alien gave himself up, Isaac knew why she had chosen it. Little and broken, but still good. Still family.  
  
Boyd had never stopped loving Alicia even after she disappeared. His family all still loved her and spoke of her often with fond tones. Gone but not forgotten. Missed but not lingering.  
  
Isaac could do that. He could take corners of his spaces and pull them in. Find comfort in their presence, little by little. It wouldn't happen right away. He had gotten too used to relying on them to stand up straight. He can’t move on just like out, not after a mere six months without them.  
  
So he talks to Boyd too.  
  
Tells him how after all the pestering Isaac had finally broken down and read Harry Potter. Laughs a little over how right Boyd had been in his praise of the series and all the value he placed in these seven stupid books. He tells Boyd that's he's read the first three in one week and now he's halfway through the fifth. The fourth was his favorite, he'd loved the dragons and the maze just like Boyd had promised he would. As Boyd was rarely wrong about things concerning Isaac he pegged his favorite character as well: Ron. He likens Harry to Scott and Allison laughs.  
  
She's stopped hugging him a while ago, but states she's always pictured Scott more of the James Potter type. Isaac's eyes widen and they spend the next hour debating the series over Boyd's grave.  
  
It's the best memorial Isaac has ever given anyone.  
  
Allison tells him one thing once they get in her car: "You need to talk to Scott." Isaac knows.  
  
He's not going to run this time.  
  
When he opens the door to Scott's home, to his home, he finds Scott drooling on the couch. For a moment he considers leaving him there and putting the conversation off another day. But he can imagine Boyd's disappointed face and Erica's scoff and knows that he's better than that. He's not scared any more; he's not quite so lonely.  
  
Scott jerks awake as Isaac clears his throat.  
  
"Oh! You're home." Scott runs a hand through his bed head.  
  
"Yeah." Isaac says holding back the urge to scuff the floor because he knew it drove Melissa crazy.  
  
Scott gets up and walks towards him, stopping a few feet away to give Isaac room to run. "I do miss them." He said, a peace offering, an echo.  
  
"Me too."  
  
Before Isaac can say anything else Scott hugged him, pulling him close and keeping him so very warm. It takes Isaac a few short seconds before he hugs back.  
  
Physical affection has never been something Isaac dealt with. He remembers a time before the freezer when his father would hug him and kiss him goodnight, when Camden would hoist him up and sling him around his shoulders, when his mother would put him in her lap as she read. But those times ended and it was years before Boyd's strong arms hugging him close and Erica musing his hair and kissing his cheeks, and Scott, always Scott. Scott who didn't want him to get hurt, hugging him close and tight like it would solve all of his problems.  
  
It solved some of them. He had a home.  
  
"I'm not something you can fix." He tells Scott's shoulder, his lips moving the fabric of his shirt.  
  
"No," Scott agrees as he slides a hand up into Isaac's curls.  
  
"I need to do that myself." Isaac continues. It's not going to happen all at once, it might not happen at all, but Isaac cannot, will not, change himself just for this brilliant shining boy holding him till their heartbeats sync.  
  
"I'll be here when you need me." Scott promises, because Scott is always promising him something and he always keeps them.  
  
"Why?" Isaac asks. Part of him already knows the answer and has for weeks but he wants to hear Scott say it out loud.  
  
"It's not obvious?" Scott asks, drawing back to send Isaac a confused look. "Stiles says I'm not very subtle."  
  
Isaac grins, ten thousands watts, and Scott kisses him.  
  
As Scott lays gentle kisses all over Isaac's face, Isaac knows he can do this. The spaces are still there, exactly where they will always be, but they don't seem quite as omnipresent. He can live with them now. The weight is not so heavy and he does not have to carry it alone.  
  
He knows now that he has never had to carry it alone.  
  
Allison's small two-person apartment thrums with people. It's just pack and the still the warmth presses against the walls and the sharp crisp scent of home fills Isaac's nose. He's not very good at this whole werewolf business, even after all this time, but if feels all right this time. The twins offer him cautious smiles and Isaac returns them. He hasn't forgotten what they did, can see them forcing Derek to kill Boyd, but knows that they want to change. Isaac can understand that. He wants to change too.  
  
Stiles crows as they walk in with their hands brushing, just a little too close together to remain friendly. Lydia sniffs as she hands Danny ten dollars. Allison simply smiles, sweet and warm. Isaac thinks once more that he can do this.  
  
Here in this room full of family he feels safe.  
  
"Fucking finally." Stiles says as he pulls Scott down on to the couch. Isaac slides in next to him while Danny shoots him a shit-eating grin. "You two took forever."  
  
Scott fidgets and smiles at Isaac, who lets their fingers twine together. The room at large hands Danny five dollars.  
  
"You bet on me?" Isaac asked him, surprised.  
  
Danny shrugged. "No harm in easy money."  
  
Isaac laughs and the room warms by several degrees.  
  
It no longer feels as if there's a guillotine hanging just above his head, its rope fraying under the weight of things he never says. There are still two spaces over each shoulder that much will never change. But their bearing and manner has changed. They comfort rather than dampen; they soothe the places they once cut deep. Lydia calls the room to order, snapping her words like a whip and Stiles snaps right back, easy with friendship and years of history.  
  
He's all right. Not okay, but working towards it.  
  
He's going to be just fine.


End file.
